YouTube supports 8k videos on televisions with version 10 of Android TV
Google has updated the YouTube app for Android TV to add limited support for 8k video playback. At the moment, however, hardly any televisions seem to meet the various conditions.
Update 2.12.08 of the YouTube app for Android TV adds the limited 8k support. In addition to the requirements of an 8k TV and at least Android 10, users must have televisions with hardware support for the AV1 video codec.
At the moment there don’t seem to be any televisions that can use this. There are not many 8k TVs running on Android TV. For example, the Sony ZH8 and ZG9 do fall into that category, but they still run on Android 9. The Chinese manufacturer TCL previously informed the website FlatpanelsHD that the X915, an 8k LCD TV with quantum dots and HDMI 2.1, released in Europe, support for YouTube in 8k. This television supports the AV1 codec, but the necessary upgrade to Android 10 does not seem available yet. The first televisions that meet all the requirements will probably not be released until next year.
Incidentally, it was previously said with the YouTube app for Android TV with the requirements for 8k video that there should be support for playing AV1 videos with HDR, but that requirement has disappeared in the latest version. Version 2.12.08 also adds a Cast Connect feature. If a user wants to cast content to their television, this feature ensures that the video is not displayed in a separate player, but in the appropriate internal app on the Android TV TV.
TCL X915